ABSTRACT
Spring Thunder as a description of an event elicited criticism almost from the moment it was presented not only as an idea but conceptualized as a specific form of radical and revolutionary politics.1 The criticism also came from fellow travellers. The criticism was not of the event, but of the mode of organizational functioning of the revolutionaries, the pattern of their actions, and the way in which the Spring Thunder as both a description of an event, and a programme and a path looked at the question of the genesis of revolutionary politics, and specifically, its popular roots. The criticism went hand in hand with organization-building, party formation, establishment of what was called revolutionary authority, and the fast pace of the radical activities. Development of the revolution and critique of the revolution accompanied each other, a fact whose significance we are yet to understand.2
